


The Birthday Boss

by Nebulad



Series: Gift Fic [3]
Category: Saints Row
Genre: Birthday Fluff, F/M, Fluff, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-10
Updated: 2016-11-10
Packaged: 2018-08-30 03:20:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8516473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nebulad/pseuds/Nebulad
Summary: “The fuck is that?” In true Johnny fashion, she could tell he thought it was a gun. She couldn’t see his eyes but there was a look in his… sunglasses? Glasses? She’d never asked. Either way he wanted to fire whatever she had in her hands but joke was on him.“It’s a camera. We’re making a video for Boss’ birthday,” she said. It was on so Kinzie had some editing to do but whatever. She got off on nerd shit anyway.





	

**Author's Note:**

> [Find this Boss Here !!!](http://v3ilfire.tumblr.com/tagged/lucia-valdez).

With the Boss safely encased in the simulation, Shaundi brought out the weird… thing that Kinzie assured her was a camera. _Don’t worry about the details. Just hit the button and get the footage and I’ll worry about the rest,_ she’d said flatly, barely looking up from the computer she’d managed to find. What the fuck ever, honestly.

It just so happened that the boss was the first person to have a birthday in their brand new space-hell, and so Shaundi wanted to make a big deal out of it. They couldn’t have a big party on the penthouse like they had on earth, and there was a distinct lack of strippers that was going to really complicate the entertainment— also they were on the run from a fucking alien overlord and all his douche-y underlings so that sucked too— but as far as the day (now a twenty-four hour period without the benefit of a sun and all) went, Shaundi was gunna make it amazing.

The first person she went to was Johnny. It made sense— he was the right hand, Lucia’s oldest friend, and maybe boyfriend? Who fucking knew with them, honestly, but point was she went to see him first for Reasons and not because she still had a hard time believing that he was just back now. After everything that happened, the tears and the guilt and the late night flashbacks to Carlos, it turned out surprise! Wasted effort, wasted stress, wasted revenge, and she was totally okay with it now.

Totally.

“The fuck is that?” In true Johnny fashion, she could _tell_ he thought it was a gun. She couldn’t see his eyes but there was a _look_ in his… sunglasses? Glasses? She’d never asked. Either way he wanted to fire whatever she had in her hands but joke was on him.

“It’s a camera. We’re making a video for Boss’ birthday,” she said. It was on so Kinzie had some editing to do but whatever. She got off on nerd shit anyway.

“Video about what?”

“I don’t know. Say something nice about her, or something about earth that didn’t suck.” And truth be told, lots of shit on earth sucked. Before Shaundi had joined the Saints, Lin dying and Julius trying to kill the Boss sucked. Carlos and Aisha dying sucked. Johnny dying sucked. Their rise to power wasn’t all blowjobs and doughnuts, but there’d been good times too that she figured it was safe to recall without making it sound like _oh remember earth before Zinyak killed it?_

Johnny sat back running his knife along his knuckles like it was second nature. “All right, how ‘bout this? Remember when we were burying Shogo but another hearse was pulling in? They were all—”

“Lighten the mood, Johnny.”

“—yeah, yeah, not really birthday material. Fine so, how ‘bout when we were at Freckle Bitch’s the one time and there was that loose nail on the seat and you—”

“All right for my sake don’t finish that story. I don’t wanna know.” This wasn’t supposed to be hard.

Johnny laughed. “That story’s pretty gross actually. She ended up—”

“Johnny.”

“Fine, fine. Well, you know, there was when I first saw her.” The look on his face was neither nostalgic nor tender so Shaundi settled back for a story about a fight. “Julius and Troy hauled her down to the church and she had this whole tough-girl attitude— just grated on me, you know? We were a gang but we may as well have been a fucking church group for all the self-righteous assholes Julius was hauling in from around town. Lots of them wanted to be bangers and wanted to own the Row, but lots of them figured just _wantin’_ gave them the right.”

“Sounds like Boss.” Of course, it would be more annoying if she wasn’t Boss and was just Lucia with a bad attitude.

“Yeah, so I thought up _canonizing_ the Saints. Julius wasn’t real into it but the gang _loved_ it. Gave them a sense of legitimacy, like we weren’t just a group of assholes standing around and talking big about taking everything back. Also, let them beat the shit out of new guys. So she shows up with that Boss attitude and I say to Julius that she ain’t been canonized. Then she has about thirty seconds to figure out what that means while Julius pisses around about it, and before she knows it the whole gang jumps her.”

“Lemme guess. Boss hands them all their asses and a prophecy was born.” Sounded like Lucia anyway. It was hard not to believe all the fucking hype around her when she did shit like live through at least three separate plane crashes and blew up more than one military base— not even for a reason, just that it happened to go down like that. Even if she was fucking ridiculous— god even that second she was being distracted by Miller, wandering around that fucking simulation with her halo on— she did some wild shit.

“Oh fuck no. Scrawny kid like that against all those big guys going at her? Not a chance. Gave me such a fucking _look_ afterwards, and I looked right back at her. Said _blood in, blood out,_ because that was the point of getting canonized. After that, there wasn’t no Gat without Boss.” He was quiet for a second, then shrugged. “That’s all I got. Blood in, blood out. Happy birthday, Santa Lucia.” He waved a little at the camera then hopped off the crates he was sitting on. _Where_ he was going, Shaundi had no fucking idea. It was a pretty small ship, but he seemed to have Stilwater on his mind so she let him wander away.

. . . . .

“Pierce, wake up.” The camera was already rolling and Shaundi was trying to decide whether or not she wanted the part where Pierce jerked awake with a snort to be edited out or not. “We’re making a video for Boss’ birthday. Say something nice.”

“I’m already doing something for her birthday,” he said defensively. He evidently thought the camera was a gun too, judging back the way he was trying to inch away from it.

“Like fucking what?”

“That’s between me and Kinzie.” He must’ve noticed the lens because he relaxed and quit trying to scramble away.

“Kinzie never said anything to me about it.” Although who was surprised? Girl really had to work on her order of information— what should come first in a conversation versus what she ended up blurting out halfway through. She’d gotten better once her and Viola started hanging out together but now of course…

“Probably ‘cuz it ain’t your business.” He put his feet up like he was gunna nap again.

“Tell me what you’re doing or I’m gunna tell Boss about the stash of alien sex toys you found.”

“I _told_ you, those are weapons. They’re just… shaped weird. I don’t even know what alien dick— fine, look. I’m making her a mixtape.”

“Jesus Christ Pierce.”

“Of _our_ songs.” All right. Shaundi sat down because he was gunna walk her through this— he owed her after thinking up a fucking present and never telling anyone. “Look me and the Boss don’t get along in the same way her and Gat do. All my planning and marketing— not her thing. What me and her got that she don’t have with no one else is car-e-oke. I got Kinzie to find me copies of a bunch of songs that we duet, because it’s all well and good she can get them on her fake phone in fake holographic Steelport—”

“Don’t think it’s a hologram but okay.”

“But now she can have a copy in the real world. Remind her what exists and what doesn’t, right?” He sat back and… fuck, well, she had to admit it was a good idea. Even without all the sentimental shit, Boss just really liked car duets— or in her case, motorcycle duets. Not that there were any Kanedas left but…

“Well, I’m making her a birthday video. Say. Something. Nice.” She tapped the camera that technically had all sorts of good material on it already, just… all about Pierce’s present. He shrugged heavily.

“Hey Boss. Remember that time in Chinatown when you were driving me to _Phuc Mi’s_ and the road was empty? So you popped that wheelie and I was screaming and you kept it going for like, _blocks?_ Yeah fuck you. Happy birthday.” He went back to his Nyte Blayde comic, a sad front for his nap, so Shaundi rolled her eyes and stood up. Good enough.

. . . . .

“Done already?” Kinzie, once again, didn’t even look up.

“Almost. Just me and you left,” she said, rolling her shoulders. _This_ time her little ginger head snapped up like Boss’ did when someone brought in fresh croissants.

“I thought I was editing?”

“You are. But you’re also gunna be in on the video.” She’d already gotten almost everyone else on the ship— even Miller had something to say. Lots to say. Had to cut him off when he dissolved into _tears,_ actually. “All you gotta do is say something nice.”

For a second, Kinzie looked like she was gunna fight it, but then decided that it was a fight she’d lose. “Fine. But I’m not gunna cry like Matt did.”

“No one else has, really.” That seemed to put her in a better mood for her little speech.

“All right, so… Boss. We are two… _severely_ different people. You don’t know what a hashtag is. You had to ask me how to set Pierce’s ringtone to _Bounce Like my Checks_. You’ve killed three people before I wake up in the morning—”

“All right Kinzie it’s a birthday video, not a roast.”

“I’m getting there,” she said defensively. “Anyway, like I said. I had every reason to believe that I wouldn’t like working with you, but… I was wrong. For all your shortcomings and the _shoot first, with a tank if there’s delicate machinery around_ policy… you make me feel safer than I’ve ever felt, both in the sense that you’d shoot anyone who tried to kill me, and… personally, like the Saints _want_ to defend me instead of feeling obligated to.” And with that, her face was buried back in the laptop again.

Shaundi put the camera down, grinning. “That was sweet.”

“Just finish the damn video.”

. . . . .

Shaundi turned the camera on herself, folding her legs neatly and trying not to feel self-conscious. “We’ve been through a lot together, Boss. When you picked me up I… I just wanted a good time, you know? You probably get that, having lived in Stilwater and all. I guess I also wanted someone to just take me seriously for once. It felt like… yeah I liked sex, but suddenly it disqualified me from being _listened_ to even when I had something to say, which— god, I was high so often who knows _what_ I was saying.

“But I changed. Most of it was because it just… wasn’t fun anymore. I was more useful sober and clear-headed, and people started treating me better. But you— you’ve always treated me right. You were protective but after Carlos… I get why.”

She shifted. No one ever really talked about Carlos after what the Brotherhood did. Jessica was supposed to be closure but… fuck they were all old enough now to know that there was no such thing as just… ending something like that. Shaundi had lived but Carlos died… there was a lot of that in her history. She kept getting kidnapped and held hostage and all sorts of shit but Boss never let her get hurt. She’d never slipped through the cracks like the others had.

“I guess, the nice thing I wanna say about you on your birthday is that you didn’t wait to treat me the way I deserved until after I cleaned up my act. It’s… what I admire most about you, I guess. Happy birthday and… everything.” It seemed a lame way to end but anymore talking and she’d start crying. Things had been put into _jarring_ perspective lately, which was already doing a number on her emotional stability— all this thinking back on how the Saints changed her was just gunna make it worse.

She stood up and walked over, clicking the button she was fairly certain was the off switch. Time to get the video to Kinzie before Lucia and Matt finished playing Nyte Blayde.

**Author's Note:**

> This Boss belongs to [V3ilfire](http://v3ilfire.tumblr.com) and I wrote her this fic ([my writing blog is here](http://nebulaad.tumblr.com)) because it's her birthday !!! Go say happy birthday and tell her how pretty Lucia is !! Her blog has art. Fantastic art.


End file.
